Adventure Day - Clint and Grandma Style
6/30/10
I told my three year old grandson that he and I were going to spend a day together just the two of us having an adventure. Now remember, he is as I said three, so we weren't doing any wild and crazy adventurous things. Heck, knowing Clint, he probably would have been up for some bungee jumping or something like that, but this Grandma has her boundaries.
First stop was the International Water Lily Collection right in San Angelo. OK, he is three and this was more for me than for him, but I figured he would like it for a short period of time, and thankfully, he did.
They have quite a few raised ponds and you can easily walk around them as well as view them from above.
Clint like most kids loves to run and there was a small arched bridge there that he had fun with.
There were some stairs leading up in one direction that I wanted him to go up, but there were a bunch of cactus along one side that he was afraid of. It took me a bit to convince him that if he walked on the other side of the stairs, he would be fine. He seemed suspicious, but in the end went up and was quite proud of himself.
After the water lilies, we went to Mr T's Deli for lunch. It had good reviews, but I wasn't too impressed.
From there, it was on to the Nature Center along the shore of Lake Nasworthy, really close to where the kids are living right now. This was the highlight of the day.
http://www.sanangelotexas.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={00031FE3-CDFA-4F45-A7FE-06E279DEB6DA}
This turned out to be much better than I had expected actually. There was a small fee to get in, and I knew that they charged for kids age four and up. Clint doesn't turn four until late August, but when I asked him how old he was, he insisted that he was four. This made sense to him because his friends at preschool are four. I imagined the people at the nature center asking him how old he was and having him say four and me saying, he is really three and then of course the people would think I lied to save two bucks. I ended up telling him that was great, if he was four, we didn't need to buy him birthday presents. He quickly back pedaled and decided that he was three.
The nature center didn't ask.
There is a neat little room where you can watch bees making honey up close with no worries about getting stung. There are mammals, such as a ferret, ground squirrels and a coatimundi. An alligator, many, many turtles, including one that has a shell about a foot long that roams the fenced back yard. That alone was worth the price of admission. My grandson thought the turtles were really cool. He was a little too enthralled with the snakes for my taste, but oh well! He got to touch a hissing cockroach, ICK!!! He thought that was pretty cool. One of the rattlers started rattling each time he approached it's tank, and he loved that.
The center isn't just for preschoolers, there were plenty of older kids there and apparently they do a summer camp and even host birthday parties.
All in all, this was a lot of fun for very little money. I can't post most of the pictures from the center because you can see Clint's face, but I think I am safe with this one.
From the nature center we went to The Marble Slab for ice cream. I personally like Marble Slab better than Coldstone, but that may be because I went to one in the mid '80's way before I ever went to Coldstone.
http://www.marbleslab.com/ Clint Got mango ice cream with gummy bears as a mix in. I don't remember what I got.
Then we went to the River Walk.
http://www.sanangelo.org/goodtimes/attractions.php
This is right by the San Angelo Art Museum, which we didn't stop at. The design is supposed to remind you of a saddle if you didn't already figure that one out. :-)
We didn't spend much time there. We basically walked over the bridge, Clint jumping in the squares of a hop scotch game built into it, checked out a small water feature on the other side, walked back over, and asked someone how to get to a good playground.
The playground was large and crowded. Not a great place to take an active toddler when you are the only one watching him. There is so much to this particular playground that it wasn't easy to keep track of him. But he had fun and wasn't happy when it was time to leave.
He zonked out on the way home.
